4 Drunken Poems by Hosho McCreesh

“Only fascists
drink white wine!”
you say, but still,
there you both are,
opening a bottle
you’ve found
in the garage.

“Fuck,” your buddy says,
“there’s really nothing else?”

“Not even cooking sherry,”
you joke.

And so there it goes,
down the hatch,
and it’s god-awful,
worse than you
had already
imagined.

“Good christ, it’s awful,”
you say, passing the bottle
to your buddy.

He takes a hero-pull,
then growls out of it,
and slams the bottle
down on the table.

You both nip at it a while
your younger brother
stares at you,
smiling.

And when the bottle’s
half gone, you say, “I
can’t do it, man.
I’m not drinking
another drop of
that poison.”

And your buddy is pissed,
and he soldiers on
out of spite
for the bottle,
out of spite
for Fascism, and
out of spite
for white wine,
and the world,
and you both end up
passed out on the
front porch.

And months later
your brother asks,
“Do you remember
that time you guys
were drinking?”

“Um,” you say, “you’ll need to
be a little more specific.”

“It was the night,” he says,
“you guys were drinking
a bottle with
vegetables
in it.”

What the shit? you think,
and then there’s a flash, you
pulling mustard and dill seeds,
and maybe a long strand
of celery string
from your
mouth.

“Dear god man,” you say,
“why the hell
didn’t you
stop us?”

And you’re brother says
“You looked like you
knew what you were
doing.”

“Goddammit,” you say,
“just for future reference:
if I am drinking
Mom’s homemade
vinegar,
I clearly have
no fucking idea
what I amdoing!”
but your brother is
laughing too hard
to actually pay
attention.

————————————

3am in some
war zone flat,
two girls on your lap
as you scream along
with Prince,
“How can you just
leave me standing…”
and bang
bang
banging
back on the
neighbor’s wall,
yelling “No
YOU shut the
fuck up!”

————————————

10 o’clock
and the night is
slow and dull,
and someone says
“Let’s go to Vegas,”

But then you
actually go.
And you spend three days
in a hotel room
at the Sahara,
dragging the plastic
garbage can down to
the hotel bar,
and filling it with
75¢ beers, and
chucking the empties
out your twelve-story window
at the construction site
across the way,
hands around
naked hips
trying to keep
each other from
falling off the
ledge
of the sad, lonely,
and desperate
goddamned
world.

And the dumb ol’ neighbors are
being shitty again,
huffing and puffing
like children,
but they can
stick it in their ass
because tonight
we’ve pounded
margaritas out of
skull mugs,
and we’re here,
and we’re alive in this
vast, empty, dying
universe, and the
battle against the
hard, and stupid
weeks, and the
hard and stupid
jobs, and the
hard and stupid
life is finally being
won.

Then your buddy
David-Lee-Roths off
the broken couch,
nearly kicking the fucking
ceiling fan and he’s
transfixed
in mid-air
as the night
officially hits
critical
mass.